“Love Your Neighbor as Yourself”: Refuting “The Christian God Endorses Slavery” Error
Jesus states that all of God’s moral law (i.e., “the Law and the Prophets”) hangs on two commands:
1. Love God with your whole being.
2. Love your neighbor as yourself (Matt 22:36–40; Lev 19:18).
That is not a slogan. It is a hermeneutical key. It means every command, including instructions regulating servitude, must be interpreted through the controlling principle of neighbor-love.
When Jesus is asked, “Who is my neighbor?”, he removes the loopholes. He answers with the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37): your “neighbor” is anyone in need whom you have the power to help; even enemies, outsiders, and those you would naturally avoid. This establishes a moral horizon that rules out exploitation by definition.
The prophets echo this relentlessly. God weighs justice, mercy, and humble faithfulness above ritual precision (Hos 6:6; Amos 5:21–24; Isa 58:6–7; Mic 6:6–8). True obedience is measured by how one treats the oppressed, not by technical compliance.
Jesus gives a further interpretive lens: some Mosaic laws were not ideal but concessions to “hardness of heart” (Matt 19:8). They were guardrails for a fallen people, not revelations of God’s moral ideal. Divorce is the clearest example. Temporary accommodation does not entail moral endorsement.
After the Flood, God promised not to wipe out humanity every time human society sank into sin (Gen 8:21–22; 9:8–17). That covenant frames the entire Old Testament: God patiently limits and regulates destructive practices rather than instantly abolishing them, because immediate abolition would mean perpetual judgment. He moves humanity toward the creation ideal through progressive moral revelation.
Put together:
1. God’s ideal is non-negotiable neighbor-love.
2. Concessions appear only because God refuses to destroy humanity wholesale.
3. Regulations of servitude are concessions, not ideals.
4. Therefore, no biblical command can coherently be interpreted as endorsing the moral legitimacy of taking human beings as involuntary chattel.
To read “love your neighbor as yourself” as compatible with “you shall take your neighbor into involuntary bondage” is to gut the principle at the center of Jesus’ ethical teaching.
And the claim is falsifiable. Show even one command where God explicitly instructs Israel to take a human being as an involuntary slave (לָקַח לְעֶבֶד) or enslave (הֶעֱבִיד) them against their will, rather than regulate an already existing Near Eastern institution, and the argument collapses.
No such command exists.
Soli Deo Gloria